Ole Miss the only clear winner in debate
source: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/sep/28/ole-miss-seems-only-clear-winner-in-debate/...
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OXFORD, Miss. -- It was the week of McCain and Mississippi.
John McCain, the senator from Arizona, seized the spotlight on Wednesday with his dramatic announcement that he would not attend the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election.
That left the University of Mississippi -- and the state where McCain's family roots run deepest -- in limbo, uncertain if the debate it had spent $5.5 million and countless man-hours to produce would actually happen.
But by Friday afternoon, both McCain and Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama -- and the national press -- had finally arrived in the hill country of North Mississippi.
Somehow, 46 years to the day that Mississippi state troopers blocked African-American student James Meredith from setting foot on the campus, the spotlight was less on Obama, the first black major-party nominee, than on McCain.
As the debate grew closer, faces familiar to national politics began to be seen in the vast media tent. For the Democrats, here came 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and 2008 primary candidate Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. For the Republicans, the home state governor, Haley Barbour (not always McCain's best ally), and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
They would be spinning before the debate ever began, following the leads of the campaigns. McCain-Palin had already started running Web ads proclaiming him the winner of the debate. Obama's campaign sent out a heavily annotated memo proclaiming McCain the heavy favorite to win the debate, which was supposed to focus on foreign policy and national security but would now include discussion of the nation's financial crisis.
Chancellor Robert Khayat had indulged in his own spinning earlier in the day, suggesting the heightened drama created by McCain would make an already historic day even more "extraordinary" for Ole Miss students
John McCain, the senator from Arizona, seized the spotlight on Wednesday with his dramatic announcement that he would not attend the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election.
That left the University of Mississippi -- and the state where McCain's family roots run deepest -- in limbo, uncertain if the debate it had spent $5.5 million and countless man-hours to produce would actually happen.
But by Friday afternoon, both McCain and Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama -- and the national press -- had finally arrived in the hill country of North Mississippi.
Somehow, 46 years to the day that Mississippi state troopers blocked African-American student James Meredith from setting foot on the campus, the spotlight was less on Obama, the first black major-party nominee, than on McCain.
As the debate grew closer, faces familiar to national politics began to be seen in the vast media tent. For the Democrats, here came 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and 2008 primary candidate Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. For the Republicans, the home state governor, Haley Barbour (not always McCain's best ally), and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
They would be spinning before the debate ever began, following the leads of the campaigns. McCain-Palin had already started running Web ads proclaiming him the winner of the debate. Obama's campaign sent out a heavily annotated memo proclaiming McCain the heavy favorite to win the debate, which was supposed to focus on foreign policy and national security but would now include discussion of the nation's financial crisis.
Chancellor Robert Khayat had indulged in his own spinning earlier in the day, suggesting the heightened drama created by McCain would make an already historic day even more "extraordinary" for Ole Miss students
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- News and Politics, Politics, Election 2008
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- tags:
- News and Politics, Politics, Election 2008, Mississippi, 2 more
